I'm a high school student, so pardon me for my innocence. I am doing prime number recognition for my extended essay. And could someone kindly explain the immediate consequence portion of Fermat's Little Theorem as posted here?

I would love to help you. But can you please say what, more specifically, you are having trouble with? I cannot paraphrase a whole section of the book...

Dec 20th 2009, 08:12 PM

manfredm

The portion that says:

"Note the following immediate consequence (of the theorem): if p does not divide a and p^n is the highest power of p dividing a^(p-1), then p^(n+e) is the highest power dividing[ a^((p^e)(p-1)) - 1] where e is greater than or equal to 1; in this statement, if p = 2, then n must be at least 2."